Ginny Roth has an excellent piece out in The Hub Canada today. First of all, people like her writing on these subjects is inspiring to young women and families alike. She is one of the few, and was at it long before it was acceptable to do so. I think it’s so right to say that there’s a snowball effect, and positive social contagion from seeing children and families woven into existing patterns of life that people are already engaged in, as Ginny does herself. We need more of this. Setting too high an ideal and excessive finger-wagging aren’t that attractive if that’s all there is, and not likely to change behaviour.

I do think more is to be said about the ‘workism’ problem that she references but somewhat downplays. The men and women who write about these issues tend to be fairly dynamic high energy and skill types, for whom family and full-time work is easier than it is for many. Much more attention and policy effort should be directed to making part-time work more normative, and especially for mothers, many of whom also want that. Kudos to the federal conservatives for recently putting forward policy ideas to amend parental leave policies to make that more feasible.

I also think the kind of appeal to pluralism we see a lot in certain circles these days is much too lukewarm. It’s like another kind of diversity rhetoric – something that is right and good to an extent, but that we don’t really need more of in many domains. When it comes to childcare models, school choice, and work-life balance arrangements, it’s well and good when there’s a fairly homogeneous core good provided with modification in service delivery and competition to drive improvements. But there are plenty of things that don’t need more diversity – and family structure and core relationship norms are some of them.

The data is clear on the child preferences of women and men and many are now forthright and not afraid to say so, just as it is clear about how lax attitudes to premarital sex, marriage, divorce, and have directly contributed to the fertility and coupling problems.

The evidence is equally clear about the harms associated with sexual promiscuity, cohabitation, and divorce, as well as the irreplaceable importance of mothers and fathers for children. These are not areas for promoting pluralism, but a clear positive ideal of stable marriage as the foundation for a rich, loving, and fulfilling relationship between spouses and for the well-being of their children.

I’m more than happy to say so without equivocation, and hope many more start, but without that ugly judgmentalness, the right amount of gentleness and nuance, and also humility and understanding, because no one fully lives up to ideals.

I certainly haven’t, and don’t. And that should never lead to mean-spirited shaming but be a cause for greater mutual understanding and sympathy.